{"id":16108,"date":"2014-02-06T08:44:35","date_gmt":"2014-02-06T12:44:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blumenthals.com\/blog\/?p=16108"},"modified":"2014-02-22T12:50:24","modified_gmt":"2014-02-22T16:50:24","slug":"oh-where-is-washington-nc-how-to-fix-a-map-error","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blumenthals.com\/blog\/2014\/02\/06\/oh-where-is-washington-nc-how-to-fix-a-map-error\/","title":{"rendered":"Oh Where is Washington, NC? How to Fix a Google Map Error"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"atlantis\"<\/a>Egregious mapping errors occur a lot less these days on Google Maps. While roads are still being lost or misnamed in New Jersey, we have seen no lost towns<\/a> and misplaced communities<\/a>\u00a0like we saw in 2009 and 2010. And truth be told the problem with roads in New Jersey may be just a reflection of some larger ground truth<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But when serious mapping errors do occur they are still painful and negatively impact the businesses involved. \u00a0I recently received this email from a forlorn innkeeper, Beckie Sipprell<\/a> in Washington, NC:<\/p>\n

Hello Mike,<\/em><\/p>\n

Lisa Kolb at Acorn suggested tha tyou might be interested in a dilemma that we have in Washington NC. The town of Washington NC, not the County. That is the issue. When someone puts in Washington NC Bed and Breakfast or restaurants what shows on Google Maps are places in Washington County NC…and no one seems to know how to undo this.<\/em><\/p>\n

If you have any magic in this department please pass it on to us. I am at a loss.\u00a0Thank you for any help you might give.<\/em><\/p>\n

I asked Dan Austin for a MapMaker perspective on the problem and whether anything could be done.<\/p>\n

Here is his response (once again chock full of useful tidbits if you run into this issue).<\/p>\n

Yes and no.<\/p>\n

\n

What Google Maps should do is offer you a choice between the county and the city, or just ignore the county altogether. \u00a0That is not ‘normal’ Maps behavior to pull up counties unless it’s a specific search for the county.<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n
I can’t resolve it directly using MM, but the easiest way to handle it (without going through Maps Report a problem, which has not been trustworthy in my experience) is to go on to MM and use Edit\/Report this to explain the issue (attach message below in the Comments field). \u00a0I would add it to each boundary (see below).<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
The other is contact\u00a0Places Support<\/a>\u00a0and ask them to escalate it to the appropriate team.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
They might want to try both to see which method resolves quicker.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
Google can resolve it using either Atlas\/Ground Truth or dispatch an engineer to mess with the code.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
Town:<\/div>\n
Washington<\/a>\u00a0(shortlink: \u00a0http:\/\/goo.gl\/mhlwG5<\/a>)<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
County:<\/div>\n
Washington County<\/a>\u00a0(shortlink: \u00a0http:\/\/goo.gl\/cRx5Wt<\/a>)<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
Message I would use:<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
Searches for POIs in the city\u00a0of Washington, NC\u00a0<\/i>(http:\/\/goo.gl\/mhlwG5<\/a>)\u00a0<\/i>are resolving incorrectly for the county of Washington NC (http:\/\/goo.gl\/cRx5Wt<\/a>) instead of\u00a0the city. \u00a0Example POI search: \u00a0http:\/\/goo.gl\/LPZSPP<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0Also, the city\u00a0is not locatable using a direct search in MM: \u00a0http:\/\/goo.gl\/ELznKm<\/a>\u00a0Please correct or escalate to\u00a0the appropriate support team so the city rather than the county is selected for future map\u00a0searches using the\u00a0search term Washington, NC. \u00a0Searches for the county should only be used if the specific search term Washington County, NC is\u00a0selected (or at least give the option to select between the two boundaries in the sidebar). \u00a0There may be a data quality issue, since one of the county names is Washington and\u00a0isn’t correctly categorized as Obscure, and Maps is incorrectly parsing the two entities and choosing the ‘bigger’\u00a0incorrect\u00a0one. \u00a0A bot added the additional shortened name for all counties in the US: \u00a0<\/i>http:\/\/goo.gl\/qkGj0S<\/a>\u00a0so it may be a nationwide, bad data issue. \u00a0<\/i><\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
You’ll get a response back within a few days from MM telling you that they can’t fix it, and that they’ve escalated to the appropriate team. \u00a0It may take a while to fix it.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
It was tough to find the city. \u00a0I had to use the Browse mode (city\/town\/village category) as it didn’t come up in the general search (it resolved to the county instead). \u00a0Edit, made no change to the city, saved as Draft, and then pulled it from my sidebar under My Activities, Everything. \u00a0(Future reference\/MM kung fu technique.)<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Egregious mapping errors occur a lot less these days on Google Maps. While roads are still being lost or misnamed in New Jersey, we have seen no lost towns and misplaced communities\u00a0like we saw in 2009 and 2010. And truth be told the problem with roads in New Jersey may be just a reflection of …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":262,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16108","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-google-mapmaker","category-google-maps-google-local"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blumenthals.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16108","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blumenthals.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blumenthals.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blumenthals.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/262"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blumenthals.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16108"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/blumenthals.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16108\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16257,"href":"https:\/\/blumenthals.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16108\/revisions\/16257"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blumenthals.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16108"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blumenthals.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16108"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blumenthals.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16108"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}